Roz Savage is towed out to the Golden Gate to prepare for her rowing adventure on the Pacific Ocean after a news conference at Fort Baker in Sausalito, Calif. on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. Savage, who successfully rowed her vessel solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 2006, hopes to embark on the first leg of her solo journey, a three-month trek to Hawaii, sometime Thursday night.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle
**Roz Savage
Ran on: 07-11-2007
Roz Savage, 39, on the deck of her 24-foot rowboat Brocade, leaves from San Francisco later this week on her transpacific journey.
Ran on: 07-11-2007
Roz Savage, 39, on the deck of her 24-foot rowboat Brocade, leaves from San Francisco later this week on her transpacific journey. MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOGRAPHER AND S.F. CHRONICLE/NO SALES - MAGS OUT

Photo: PAUL CHINN

Roz Savage is towed out to the Golden Gate to prepare for her...

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Roz Savage rows her high-tech boat near the Golden Gate Bridge while preparing for a rowing adventure on the Pacific Ocean in Sausalito, Calif. on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. Savage, who successfully rowed her vessel solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 2006, hopes to embark on the first leg of her solo journey, a three-month trek to Hawaii, sometime Thursday night.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle
**Roz Savage MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOGRAPHER AND S.F. CHRONICLE/NO SALES - MAGS OUT

A British environmentalist who abandoned her attempt to row to Australia after her boat capsized 90 miles from Crescent City said Friday that she will resume her effort once the weather clears.

Roz Savage, 39, encountered rough seas Wednesday night, causing her custom-made, 24-foot rowboat, named Brocade, to roll several times. She reluctantly agreed to be airlifted to land by a Coast Guard helicopter, but not before pledging to come back for her boat.

"I intend to carry on, preferably from where I left off, but failing that, then from wherever the Brocade has drifted to between now and then," Savage wrote Friday on her Web site.

Savage used a satellite phone to call her mother and two friends Thursday morning. Someone concerned about her plight called the Coast Guard, which directed a merchant vessel and a C-130 Hercules cargo plane to her location.

After several hours of communication with the Coast Guard, Savage decided to leave her boat, and a helicopter took her back to land, where she underwent medical tests and was given a clean bill of health, said her spokeswoman, Nicole Bilodeau.

"She's doing really well," Bilodeau said. "She's in good spirit and upbeat. Of course, she was disappointed and sad to cut her journey short just now, but she was upbeat considering the circumstances."

Savage's account on her Web site, www.rozsavage.com, provides vivid detail of how things went wrong while she was alone in heavy seas.

Her troubles began on Tuesday, when the Brocade capsized twice within two hours.

"I lay flattened on the roof of my cabin, while all around me belongings escaped from their straps and slid around the curved walls of the cabin like garments in a washing machine," she wrote of the first flip-over of her self-righting boat.

After the Brocade slowly rolled upright once again, she opened the hatch to retrieve items strapped to the Brocade's deck, but was drenched by a huge wave of cold seawater.

Savage later secured her sleeping bag to a bunk held fast to the floor with straps, but when the boat capsized a second time, the straps ripped from the floor. "Once again, I was on the ceiling," she wrote.

This time, she deployed a sea anchor, a parachute-like device designed to point a boat perpendicular to the oncoming waves and thus make it less likely to overturn.

But on Wednesday night, a powerful wave struck her boat from the stern. "I shot down my bunk, my sleeping bag tobogganing over the slippery vinyl of the mattress. I came to an abrupt halt when my skull collided with the wall at the end of the cabin," Savage wrote.

Bloodied but clear-headed, she opened the hatch and discovered that her sea anchor had been swept away, the line snapped just 6 feet from the Brocade. A backup line was also severed.

"Now, I had no defense against further capsizes," she wrote.

Later that day, she rendezvoused with a 660-foot ship, the Overseas Long Beach, which brought her a new sea anchor - but after a long struggle to get it aboard, it proved too small to be effective. With conditions deteriorating and the Coast Guard warning that she was drifting out of helicopter range, she agreed to be plucked from the sea.

Savage left from Crescent City on Aug. 12. She had planned to cross the Pacific in three stages. The first stage was to have been a two- or three-month, 2,300-mile trip to Hawaii.

Ultimately, she hoped to reach Australia, 6,700 miles away, in 2009.

Last year, the 5-foot-5, 120-pound woman crossed the Atlantic in a 103-day voyage.

"Rowing the Atlantic was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I had ever done," Savage wrote on her Web site. "I'd wanted to get out of my comfort zone, and that, by definition, is an uncomfortable place to be."

Savage's greatest concern now is to get back to her drifting boat before someone else does.

"Salvage operators have already shown interest in retrieving the Brocade," she wrote Friday. "Please, please do not touch my boat."

Adventure online

To view Roz Savage's full account of her attempt to row across the Pacific and video of her rescue, go to www.rozsavage.com.